6 comments:

-- so your new year will never be new, as it will always be tied to the year 1919.

and this is what you would like to deliver to people year after year on new year, so that no one can look forward to anything good and new. so instead of waking up to see the auspicious sights of "kani" on 14th morning, people must wake up with sad thoughts of a massacre. i'm already depressed.

how does this become a "new year" ?

but then, i forgot. i'm confusing you for someone who gives a damn, and gad, you always wanted to say that.

Here is a news item in AsianAge today. This needs to b discussed a little bit.

I am pasting this here -- hopefully no laws get violated.

Happy new year.

Regards ... Abhiha Marathe

Antulay will notify J&K, N-E Hindus as minorities - By Seema Mustafa

New Delhi, April 13: Minister for minority affairs A.R. Antulay is "going full steam ahead" to notify Hindus in Jammu and Kashmir, the Northeast and Punjab as a "minority." Insisting that this was his own idea "given to me by God", Mr Antulay has already scheduled consultations with Kashmiri Pandits on April 15 and again on April 22 to finalise the proposal, prior to the approval of the Union Cabinet. These meetings will be attended by representatives of the state governments as well as those of the Union home ministry.

Mr Antulay denies having read it, but there is a 100-page "special report" on the "Hindu Minorities of India" prepared by former Minorities Commission chairman Tahir Mehmood and submitted to the Union home ministry as far back as 1999. In this he had recommended that the fact that Hindus were in a minority in certain areas should be accepted by the government for the states of Jammu and Kashmir, Punjab, Nagaland, Meghalaya, Mizoram and the Union territory of Lakshadweep. The then Union home minister, Mr L.K. Advani, had finally agreed to take the report to Parliament but did not get around to it and the government fell.

Mr Antulay has said that he was determined to counter the Vishwa Hindu Parishad and Bajrang Dal accusations of appeasement of minorities, and that it had suddenly dawned on him that Hindus were in a minority in these states and should be notified as such by law. He said that this was going to be done for the first time, and that he was determined to get the proposal through. On April 15, 75 representatives of Kashmiri Pandits will be meeting the minister for consultations and he will be visiting Kashmir Bhavan for a second meeting the following week. The minister denied having read any previous reports to this effect, insisting that God had put it into his mind.

Mr Tahir Mehmood said that when designated as minorities by law, the Hindus in the border states would have the benefit of the Prime Minister’s 15-point programme, provisions for educational institutions, as well as the right to represent their grievances and problems before the Minorities Commission. Earlier, the move had been rejected by the National Conference in Jammu and Kashmir, which had claimed that the notification of Kashmiri Pandits as a minority would result in tension. Jammu and Kashmir does not have a state minorities commission, with a human rights commission having been set up fairly recently.

Mr Antulay made it clear that "I am not calling them a minority, they are already in a minority in these states I mentioned." He said that once the notification was cleared and issued by the government, Hindus in the concerned states would receive all the rights and privileges granted to minorities across India. "Then they will not be able to say we are appeasing any one community," he said. In fact, the last chairman of the Minorities Commission, Mr Tarlochan Singh, had wanted the government to notify the Jain community as a minority. He later told reporters that Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Uttaranchal and Uttar Pradesh had agreed in principle to his proposal.

Incidentally, all successive chairmen of the Minorities Commission — which has been pushed from the home ministry to the social welfare ministry and now to the minority affairs ministry — have ended their term with one common complaint: "we are not heard". Numerous reports have been prepared on the status of minorities and related problems by the commission over the decades and submitted to the government, which has sat on these and not even facilitated a discussion by placing the recommendations before Parliament. It is learnt that a list of the reports and recommendations by experts and scholars under the Minorities Commission has been sent to the government for action. But as the former chairmen pointed out, these reports have never been read and the recommendations on key issues, including communal violence and the police, remain gathering dust in the files.